Religious Memorials at Dachau

Touring the Dachau memorial was one of the sites I was most looking forward to on this trip. I have learned a lot about this part of World War II. I had a semester long class on the Holocaust in high school which left a large impact on me. I remember my teacher telling stories about when she visited a concentration camp while on a study abroad trip in college and I never thought that I would get the same opportunity to have a first hand experience like that.

During our free time to look around the concentration camp one of the places that I looked at were the religious memorials. I looked at both the Catholic and Jewish memorials and I was surprised to see how artistic and detailed they were. The Catholic memorial was a cylindrical structure made of stones with an alter in the center. From inside the memorial you could look out and down the main road. It was very weird that when you stood in the middle of the memorial  you could here people outside clearly talking and walking. The Jewish memorial was also very interesting. This memorial was built into the ground so it was very cool and damp in the memorial. From inside the memorial you could look up to see a hole in the ceiling where light came down and you could see the menorah that was on top of the memorial. It was interesting that some of the memorial was made to look like barbed wire. It was very interesting to see how much detail was put into these memorials and to know that these memorials were built because the survivors from the concentration camp wanted them there.